Meggy Can Has New Toy!
This week I received my tax refund cheque. $600 dollars and change, being the sum total of all the income tax installments I paid to the Australian government in the 2008 - 2009 financial year. Yays, moneys. I could be a good girl, and use it to pay for all kinds of things, but I have a long-standing tradition of regarding tax refund cheques as "fairy money", which is reserved for treats.

So I went out and purchased myself an XBox360 Elite (the one with the 120GB hard drive), plus a few games. My rationale is that it appears Square Enix are moving across to this platform now as well as the Sony ones, so having an Xbox means I'll be able to enjoy their plots some more. I now have a new toy to play with, so blog posts may be a little light on the ground for a bit while I try it out.

The games I now have: Lego Batman, Pure (motocross, I think?), Forza 3 racing, Kameo (it was supposed to be a copy of Assassin's Creed, but while they had the box, they didn't have the disk, so I got to pick another to the same value), Last Remnant, Eternal Sonata, and Assassin's Creed. Lego Batman and Pure came with the console. The next two were part of a package deal at the place I bought the console (Target, for my Aussie readers - it was the cheapest there at $429 for the bundle). I got the other three games at EBGames, because I'd seen a copy of Last Remnant in there the day before.

I would highly recommend getting "Lost Odyssey" since you have a 360 (and I'm not so sure about how Squeenix is going over to 360; FF13 Versus is going to be a PS3 exclusive and FF13 is only multiplat in the West; Japan is only getting it for 360, plus Last Remnant also came out for PC later. And it's not Squeenix, but there was a huge flap about the difference between Tales of Desperia on the 360 versus the PS3 version--basically, they used Microsoft's money to help pay for it, then when their one-year timed exclusive contract was up, the devs added a LOT of new content, content that they had hinted at in the 360 version and clues point to them having not added them to the PS3 version but having taken them out of the 360 version. Eternal Sonata on the PS3 also has a lot of additional content--more playable characters and two more levels, and it looks like they fixed something that had been considered stupid with the ending. Ditto with the expansion to the PS3 port of Star Ocean 4. Basically, because of Sony's rules--if you're going to port it over a year later to PS3 it can't be the same game--the PS3 version of any formerly 360-exclusive JRPG is going to have more content and more playable characters. Which has lead to a lot of snark on Japanese gaming forums about how the 360 versions are "beta." Likewise, the upcoming NieR games are basically the same story for both platforms, but with different versions of the lead character, Nier, to try and match the "tastes" of the platform--the PS3 version will have a younger, slim, bishounen version fighting to save his sister to match the Japanese tastes since the PS3 does better here, but the 360 version will have an older, buffer [and kinda fug, ugh] one fighting to save his daughter to match the testosterone space marine tastes in the West where the 360 is winning). Lost Odyssey was done by the people behind the original Final Fantasy and has music by Uematsu Nobuo. Plus, the localization is supposed to be excellent, and the "Thousand Years of Dreams" parts were translated by a really famous translator, one who is famous for his translations of Haruki Murakami. "Lost Odyssey" is the only game that makes me kind of wish I had a 360. I have heard nothing but good about Lost Odyssey (aside from, of course, the hater whinging about how the battle system is too "old school" and "not innovative"--like there's a problem with using a battle system that's familiar!)